CCs aren’t just for job training

Chicago will make community colleges the “first choice for high-skill job training” rather than a “last ditch effort for remedial education,” writes Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (subscribers only) touting his College to Careers initiative.

Community colleges “provide the general education that is considered a prerequisite for personal growth and participation in a free society, and that satisfies the requirements for transfer to four-year institutions,” responds Gardner.

Even within seemingly recession-proof fields, change is inevitable. This is where the critical thinking skills of a general education are indispensable.

Emanuel says nothing about vocational education in high school, notes Gardner. Our competitors offer vocational education options as “worthy alternatives,” while “we persist in the fiction that everyone is college material.”

Community College Spotlight is written by Joanne Jacobs. It provides a forum for discussion and debate about America’s community colleges, which are home to nearly half of all college students in the U.S.
Views expressed on the blog are those of Joanne Jacobs and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The Hechinger Report or the Hechinger Institute. MORE